[Discussion] Discussion] OT: Hardware Failure begets Mac Mini a bit of a rant

[Bob Wonderly]

Still lurking Ghost wants to pop in and out of this conversation. I 
"love" my Mac. As POSSI'ers know I went from OS/2 to Linux now to Mac 
and OS/X -- whichever animal is current...(its name has at best a 
ghostly fleeting presence in my mind <laugh>). [I had the same problem 
with all the variations of WARPs too.]

Yes by all means get SuperDuper! Get two external fire wire drives the 
same size as your Mac internal drive and use SuperDuper! to alternate 
bootable backups between these drives. I keep them in two separate 
places too [latest remote, oldest local ready for another backup]. I 
have not yet needed to use the "bootable" capability but I have rescued 
a few files that I mangled (the details of that event I have forgotten 
-- but SuperDuper!'s backup worked fine -- it mounts/works as just 
another drive).

Frequently -- when in a hurry -- I back up current active stuff I create 
to a thumb drive.

OS/X is UNIX based so much of the OS/2 "stuff" that mimics Unix/Linux 
utilities is available on the Mac.

Yes the Mac "just works". By installing Regina REXX on Linux and later 
on the Mac I can run the gazillions of REXX programs/scripts I had. All 
of the "interface to the outside world" "stuff" just works". Software 
updates just work. Open Office works if you use that.

I am using VMWare's Fusion and have a few Linux's running with it. I 
still have 2 dual boot ThinkPads with Linux and XP-Pro (the XP I almost 
never used). Fusion has a way to capture that XP-Pro current state and 
install it virtually but I haven't used it for much of anything either. 
It's more a case of doing it because I could than because I needed to. 
Obviously if you have the XP media you can use that when you virtualize it.

I own a one-version-back copy of Parallels too but gave up experimenting 
with it -- mostly because my Linux stuff is doing fine with Fusion and I 
had other more interesting things to do. In fact I'm not really using 
the virtual Linux machine either -- because OS/X based on BSD Unix looks 
so much like Linux... I'm a "command line fundamentalist" <laugh>.

Knowing what I do now -- which I didn't, of course then -- the one thing 
I would do differently would be to keep those boxes of WARPs, of IBM's 
compilers (especially PL/I which I miss), and the many programmer's 
editors I had. Then I would work much harder to get Parallels and OS/2 
to cooperate with each other.

I'm beginning to ramble but will offer a bit of advice to any OS/2 users 
doing "heavy techie" things that involve interfacing with IBM's 
mainframe OS (Z-OS??): think twice about abandoning OS/2 if you can keep 
it running. Classic REXX (OS/2's version) and those IBM compilers that 
run on OS/2 can do amazing cross compatibility things when you need to 
work in both environments (PC and Mainframe).

Bob Wonderly

Joseph J. Hansen wrote:
> March 8, 2009
> 
> Hi Don,
> 
> _Every_ hard drive fails sooner or later.  The best, and least 
> expensive, solution is to make regular backups.
> 
> If you have the Mac Leopard OS running, it has time machine which backs 
> up your files to an external drive.
> 
> For best protection, however, get an external drive with a firewire 800 
> port (or slightly slower firewire 400 port), and a backup program called 
> "SuperDuper!"  That lets you make and maintain a bootable backup (or 
> backups) of your entire drive so, if the internal drive fails, you just 
> boot to the appropriate partition of the external drive and you are back 
> in business immediately. When you replace the internal drive with a new 
> one (or even buy a brand new Mac), you just copy the external drive to 
> the new internal drive, and you haven't lost anything.  BTW, you can't 
> make bootable backups on a USB drive.

snip
> 
> Best regards, Joe
> 
> On Mar 7, 2009, at 9:17 PM, D Burch wrote:
> 
>> Well folks, since OS/2 2.1, Comdex '94, salmon shirts with Janet & co; 
>> the BS with the IBM executive who basically abdicated any interest in 
>> bring a truly wonderful multitasking environment to the masses, the 
>> absolutely wonderful community of POSSI. SCOUG , Warpstocks past and 
>> the future because....., Ecomstation, Pavel, Steven, Esther, Bill, 
>> Stanley, Peter and the rest of the Edmonton CAOS/2 group (that still 
>> meet to talk about boats, holidays, stuff)

snip
>>
>> I now have a MAC mini!
>>
>> I went from C-64 to OS/2. I always knew that when the time came I did 
>> not want to my computing experience to come from Redmond. So I again 
>> have chosen light over darkness.
>>
>> I picked up a little box 6.5" square X 2" high. I plugged it in, 
>> turned on the power and whoa - everything I need is there, and IT WORKS!!

>>
>>
>> Don Burch
>>
>>
>>
>>
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> 
> Joseph J Hansen
> Lexington Strategic Associates
> 221 Follen Road, Lexington, MA 02421-5802
> 
> tel (781) 863-5003
> jhansen at LexSA.com,  www.LexSA.com
> 
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